


I Will Be Brutal

by pennywife



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Attempted Suicide, Biblical References, Bisexuality, Blood and Gore, Brutal Murder, Denial of Feelings, Descent into Madness, Explicit Sexual Content, Gang Rape, Graphic Description, Graphic Description of Corpses, Homophobic Language, Marijuana, Multi, Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s), POV Alternating, POV Pennywise, Partying, Past Rape/Non-con, Pennywise (IT) Being an Asshole, Pennywise (IT) in Love, Physical Abuse, Protective Pennywise, Psychological Trauma, Rape Recovery, Revenge, Serial Killers, Sexual Violence, Sharing a Bed, Stephen King's Carrie References, Stuttering, Suicidal Thoughts, Supernatural Elements, Teacher-Student Relationship, Telekinesis, Torture, Underage Drinking, Unrequited Lust
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2019-10-26 11:20:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17744969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pennywife/pseuds/pennywife
Summary: Kill them all.





	1. Flowers That Die Pretty

**Author's Note:**

> This is by far the darkest thing I’ve ever written. PLEASE do not skip over the warnings and tags. Extremely triggering content.

A tiny slip of torn notepaper, carefully duct-taped to the outside edge of the Penobscot County Bridge, reads: _“Ruth Nygaard. May 29. Nineteen years old. I tried to wait for the sun to come out. I tried. I really, really tried.”_

 

  

Ruth’s hair, which had once been long and bleached from root to end, now hangs in a mousey tangle over her face. She’d taken a pair of kitchen-scissors to it only just last night. Quick, ragged movements that left her neck and ears littered with stinging cuts and gashes; like pages etched with red ink. She weeps now; snot on her lips, blood on her dress, toes inching dangerously closer towards the edge.

It’s early. When she’d made the long trip down here on foot the sun had still been hidden beneath the horizon, a shroud of cold darkness still covering this side of Maine. She was afraid the walk down here would make her change her mind; all blackened feet and trembling hands, but instead it had only made her feel impatient.

It’s been almost fifteen minutes since a car has passed. It’s been almost eleven since an old man in a weathered pickup-truck had slowed to a stop beside her, peeked his head out of the window to tell her that whatever boy had broken her heart couldn’t possibly be worth doing _this._ Ten since he told her how pretty she was. Nine since he’d crooned out how many more there’d be just like the one who’d left her; how her daddy would have to beat them off with a stick to keep them at bay.

Ruth had pulled her lips back in disgust, and it’s been about eight minutes since she told him to drive the fuck away.

Ten toes, bare and pale from the aching journey here, dangle precariously over the edge of the bridge. Two knees wobble and shake, and a terrible creaking erupts somewhere down inside of the structure beneath her. She places her arms out beside herself, tiny loops, like the beating wings of a bird to try and see how long she can keep her balance. Her teeth chatter like ivory pebbles between her jaws, but it isn’t fear that she feels when she pictures the long journey down into the bottom of river beneath. It’s peace; repose, escape. It is the dark black curtain. It is the sweet and becoming finality of death; never having to be anyone or do anything again for the rest of all time. An end to all things— an end to how it feels to have your ribs pried open and heart ripped from your chest by dozens of vulgar fingers.

They made her filthy. She is filthy.

Filthy.

Filthy.

_Filthy._

Ruth screams. She tilts her head back, digs her nails into her palms, and she screams. The sound claws its way out from her throat and rips through her vocal chords, the way that it had done when they held her down in the weeds. Six of them.

”Pretty little girl like you?” His words echo and ring like bells in her ears. “There’ll be plenty more boys where that one came from. Just you wait and see.”

The old man didn’t understand the meaning, the honeyed venom in his words when they burrowed into her ears. Ruth didn’t want there to be more. Ruth didn’t want there to ever be more.

This morning she had raked the key to her car in a slanted line down the length of her forearm, just to see what would happen. An angry line of navy and red burst to life beneath the brass’s edge, not enough to bleed, but enough to leave a scar that would never quite heal over. Cause and effect. A means to a choice. A consequence. An experiment. She wasn’t sure what would happen when she took that key to her wrist. Only now, when Ruth takes that last step over the edge of the bridge, she is painfully aware of what will come next.

She drops like a brick; just like the grief that plagues her mind, the river swallows Ruth whole.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

Beneath the tunnels of Derry, something frightening begins to stir. A creature with no name, one as old and as powerful as time itself, unfurls its twisted body and shakes away the sleep from its head.

It had been awakened months ago by an act of human cruelty so vile even _it_ had been without words. Its dark mind had been revived, just as it had so many times before, but only now does it see a reason to truly rise up from its bed among the sewer. It keens and stretches, sniffs the air like a curious dog before its eyes burst suddenly apart. 

An earth-woman; young, small, and familiar to it. It smells her, like blood in the water as her body dances through the river. It rushes to her like a knight in rusted armor, a savior most unlikely when it drags her onto the sharp stones at the edge of the bank.

A pretty thing, as far as humans go; all wrapped up in translucent white cloth. Her lips are violet. She isn’t moving. Her skin has no scent, no tell-tale odor of fear and demise like the others that fall beneath its hands.

 _Dead?_ It asks itself, using a long talon to jerk the human’s head from side to side.

It narrows its eyes into slits, lets out of a huff of air in annoyance. Perhaps it was wrong— for once. Perhaps this human is not what it though her to be.

It waits for a moment, studies her a while longer before deciding a still-fresh meal should never go to waste. Fangs slide out from its gums in place of the human-like teeth that had just been there before. It leans down to take hold of her foot between its jaws, wants to drag her back home to devour tonight when it grows hungry and bored. Her flesh is cool, soft, sweet to the taste, but as soon as it bites down her body begins to writhe.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

There’s a mumbling sound above Ruth’s head, and a pale gray light so bright it stings her eyes. She throws the back of her hand over her face, feels the sting of hundreds of needles in a vice around her ankle. 

It’s like she’s trapped in a dream. She tries to scream, can imagine herself doing it; but her body simply won’t listen. Gray. White. Pain. There’s a fire in her lungs, a burst of orange inside of her mind. This must be what it feels like to die.

But wait. There it is again— the mumbling. It’s like something from a horror movie, some strange voice from deep inside of a dark room.

She opens her eyes, but all she can see is the paper-white sky.

“You woke me up.” It repeats, and by now the water has cleared enough from Ruth’s ears so that she can finally understand it. “From my long rest— it was you who woke me up.” 

Ruth opens her mouth to answer, but all that comes out is a burst of silted water. Her chest rises and falls violently, small frame wracked again and again by choking coughs. 

Its head moves in close to her own, and at first she thinks it’s a mask.

“Who—“ Ruth manages to make out between gasps for air, “Who are you?”

“Why, I’m _Pennywise.”_

The thing pulls its cheeks into a pleasant grin, all painted skin and human-like features. It stares down from above her like an angel, though she can see in its eyes that it is anything but.

“Why did you do this?” It asks with its odd, wavering voice. “Such a gift you’ve been given, and yet you throw it away so carelessly? Of all the things to kill, and you tried to kill _you.”_

Ruth stares at it, blinking quickly as if she thinks it’ll somehow suddenly disappear from her vision like a blur at the corner of her eye.

“I was... I was r-raped.”

The being’s face goes flat.

“No. No, no, no. You mistake what I am asking you.” Its sky-blue eyes cloud over, brows furrowing as it gently shakes its head. “I know of what happened to you... I am not a thing like you, not by a mile. What I am is unfathomable. I am the strongest thing who has ever lived... I can look into your memories, and I can see _all.”_

Something sparks in Ruth’s mind, and though the realization is both horrifying and absurd her heart does not quicken. There is darkness in front of her, that much is certain. Darkness, all wrapped up in red and white like spatters of blood over freshly-fallen snow.

It is evil. It is not of this world, but it reaches its hand out to Ruth anyway.

And she takes it, like an old and reliable friend.

“What I meant to ask... My new little buddy... Is why didn’t you kill them instead?”

  


	2. With Open Arms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pennywise leads Ruth to its lair and tries to establish trust in her. Meanwhile Sam Dormer, the boy who took Ruth to a party after prom night, recalls everything that happened on that fateful night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has a lot of switching POV's, one of which is from the perspective of one of Ruth's assailants (?), so his language and attitude toward Ruth and women in general can be pretty triggering. It churned my guts to even write some of this stuff, so please be warned and please please please don't read this if you know it's going to hurt you. Other than this chapter containing some really messed-up subject material, this is the first time I've ever written something of my own with this many original-characters, so I was really excited to have finished this chapter. Thanks so much for reading and please don't forget to read the tags and warnings for possible triggers.

The wicked creature tries to urge her to sit up and come along with it, but it is clear from the girl’s face that she is far too afraid to dare and move any closer. Her lips are still violet, though it can see the blood heating up behind her skin; becoming redder than before, like a swelling plum beneath her nose.  
  
It takes a moment for either of them to realize they are still holding hands; a tiny sliver of human skin enveloped by the silk of the clown’s glove. She allows it to hoist her up into a seated position, and when she slowly pulls away it’s as if she fears it might try and lunge for her throat.  
  
“Is this... Is this a dr— Is this a dream?”  
  
“Of course not, Little Buddy.” The being smiles, shows her the glint of its childlike teeth. “For _I_ am the stuff of _nightmares.”_  
  
Her jaw falls open. When she raises her hand it cannot help but flinch back away in response, weary of the power that lies in wait beneath her fingertips. Instead she pushes back a strand of damp hair from her forehead, and as much as Pennywise tries to conceal it, it lets out a deep sigh of relief.  
  
It plays the moment the girl had jumped over again in its mind, watches her legs pierce like knives through the dark surface of the river. A fall like that should have been more than enough to kill her— if not from the impact alone then from the cold— and it doesn’t understand what could have possibly kept her alive.  
  
Perhaps it was its will that had saved her body from breaking on impact, and her lungs from bursting with water. In all the memories it can pluck from her head and revisit in perfect detail, never once in the span of her short life has it ever seen her use her gift. Her father’s mother; a grayed old woman who’d rocked and laughed at nothing but the fire in her house, why even _she_ had used the thing that set her apart from the others who looked much like her.  
   
But _Ruth?_  
  
Ruth had lived nothing more than a life of mediocrity and fear. If it wasn’t so certain of its own abilities, it would be sure the girl was no different than any other little human to have ever found their way between its teeth.  
  
_Perhaps,_ it thinks to itself as it watches her pull her arms in close around her body. _Perhaps she does not even know that she has it._  
  
“Come with me to my lair.” It urges, trying to shift its eyes to the most beckoning form that it can. “I will help you. I will keep you warm.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Back across the river, the entire wall rumbles as Sam Dormer slams the door to his parents’ garage behind him and stumbles back into the kitchen. He rips off his sweatshirt and tosses it into the hamper, sure to remind himself to start a load of laundry before anyone else gets home from work. His father may play coy to the smell that always seems to linger on his son’s clothes whenever he steps back in from his little trips out to the backyard, but he’s had far too many close calls with his mother to keep taking the risk. He grabs himself a half-empty bag of pork rinds, a two-liter of Coca Cola, and props his mud-caked boots up onto the edge of the coffee table. Half-smiling and half-laughing he shakes his head back and forth, still in utter disbelief. God had finally done it; He’d finally given Sam the thing he’d been praying for the most in this world.  
  
_Little Ruth Nygarrd was finally fucking dead._  
  
She’d bitten the dust. Bought the farm. Taken the big leap, swan-dived her way right over the edge of the Penobscot County bridge. Everyone and their mother had all seen it happen with their very own eyes. They had all posted their stories about it online, spoke their tales in hushed voices in line at the pharmacy— whether any of it had truly happened that way or not.  
  
_You know what? Freaks like that,_ his mother had hissed this morning over pancakes and sausage, _they always reach their breaking point._  
  
His father had shot her a look from behind the amber frames of his glasses. He’d always felt bad for the girl, and as much as Sam hated to admit it— there had been a pang of secondhand humiliation in his chest for the late Ruth as well. Dying like that, leaping into that ice-cold river like an absolute madwoman in front of everyone she knew; it was an absolute gut-punch. _How pathetic do you have to be to go and do something like that?_  
  
Sam lets out a little snort of air as he turns on the local news, waits to see her senior pictures play in sequence across the screen.  
  
They’ve been saying it was because of her mother, but Sam knows that’s likely to only be the very tip of the shit-covered ice berg. Like it or not, what they all did to that girl on prom night had likely left scars; and by jumping off that bridge she had unintentionally done them all a favor. Sam hadn’t even touched her— not really— but the news of her death made it feel as if he could finally exhale for the first time in weeks.  
  
The relief he’d felt this morning was unlike anything he’d ever felt in his life, and the news of her demise plays in his ears like the most beautiful song he’s ever heard in his life. Never again would he ever have to worry about a loud knock at the door, even if he had been _sure_ an unstable girl’s stuttering voice would never hold up to six well-rehearsed stories. Sam’s father, The Good Doctor Dormer, would stand and attest exactly what time his son and his friends arrived home; and the orphan Ruth would look like a fool. They would have all gotten away with it, that much was as certain as the rising and falling of the sun every single day, but having her dead meant that night would never again have to come back and haunt him.  
  
When at last they show her picture across the screen, butter-blonde hair straightened and tucked behind her ear, Sam can’t help but bite down on a smile.  
  
He crosses both arms behind his head, closes his eyes, and even though he truly does not want to, he thinks about prom.

 

 

* * *

 

 

  
  
“I want to.”  
  
Ruth’s hushed voice echoes throughout the walls of the creature’s den. The sun had already dipped below the horizon without so much as even a word from the girl, so to hear her speak so steadily had come as a pleasant surprise.  
  
“And what _is it_ that you are wanting?”  
  
She wipes a trail of clear liquid away from her nose with the back of her wrist, pulls her knees in close to herself. Her eyes bounce between the filthy ground beneath her and the face of the clown, and it smells a tinge of shame in the air.  
  
“You know...” Ruth grates out, looking suddenly sick to the stomach. “To k-k-k-k—“  
  
“Kill them?” It offers, and even though it tries it cannot hide the flash of excitement that rushes across its human-like features.  
  
The girl nods in response, drops her eyes down to her knees.  
  
“I want to... Believe me that I w-w-want to... But I can’t. I just... I just _can’t.”_  
  
It rolls its eyes.  
  
_Humans. Bleeding hearts._

 

 

* * *

 

 

  
Donnie Rodriguez had just been crowned prom king. He’d won by a landslide, just like everyone had known that he would. His dark eyes looked the brightest they’d ever been under the beam of those stage lights, and when at first he grabbed the queen and pulled her in for a celebratory peck Sam had been too stoned to recognize who she was. He’d been taking a piss when her name was called out, and with her face turned towards Donnie she looked just like every other girl in this school.  
  
The queen’s dress, a hideous lime green color, had been adorned with hundreds of jewels from collar to hem; and every single one of them caught the light like the sparkling scales of a fish. Sam let out a laugh to himself, muffled by the roar of the applause around him. His best friend, Donnie, was up on that stage kissing a fucking sea-bass.  
  
Sam’s trophy-date, the prettiest freshman in the whole entire county, was probably getting railed by her _real_ date somewhere out in the parking lot outside. If he wasn’t staring at Donnie with his own bloodshot eyes, he’d have figured she was with _him._ She hadn’t been able to shut up once about how handsome the young man looked in his little black bowtie, gawking across the room like she’d never seen someone so handsome before in her life.  
  
Sam shrugged. There was no need to feel bitter about it. It was almost something of a tradition by now, always being the fat friend instead of the boyfriend. Almost every girl he’d ever liked Donnie had ended up stealing, but his fame-by-association had earned him enough pity-fucks from girls he knew he’d never be able to pull again once high school ended to feel thankful for the guy while it all lasted.  
  
Sam jabbed the elbow of one of his buddies, Tate Bird, and asked him who the hell that girl was up on the stage. By now she was facing back towards them all, arms folded underneath a bouquet of flowers nearly half her size; but his high had made everything under those lights too blurry to make out anything more than shapes.

Tate had stared at him as if he’d grown a second head just for asking.  
  
“It’s Ruth Nygaard.”  
  
“Wait.” Sam narrowed his eyes even further than they already were. “Ruth Ny— _Wait.”_  
  
Tate shrugged.  
  
“Probably the band vote or somethin’.”  
  
“Ah yeah.” Sam’s messy hair bounced around his ears as he nodded his head in sudden understanding. “The band vote... That’s what it is.”  
  
Tate went back to flirting with some girl who definitely wasn’t his girlfriend, and Sam went back to staring numbly up at the stage. He was ready for the music to start back up again, even if he had no intention at all of trying to dance to it. He just wanted to ride out his high to something catchy, drink his lukewarm punch, and stare at all the girls who’d been slutty enough to have half of their tits hanging out at the prom. Ready to turn back away, he caught a glimpse Ruth and Donnie heading down opposite sides of the stage back towards the dance floor; and he didn’t understand what it was that made him want to go and find _her_ instead of best friend.  
  
He blamed it on curiosity— and maybe even a little on the weed— and tossed his now-empty cup back over his shoulder.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

  
  
“You are filled with so much hate... So much _pain.”_ The creature takes a looming step towards the wet, shivering human on the floor. “You know that you would... If you _could_... If you cared... If you _dared_... You would have ripped those children limb from limb if only you had the means. Wouldn’t you, Little Ruth?”  
  
“They’re not... They’re not children.”  
  
“Child— man.” Pennywise shrugs. “They all taste the same to me.”  
  
The clown smirks with a flash of its broken teeth, lets out a sharp chorus of simian laughter. The girl’s eyes widen, so slightly it almost misses it; and its face goes lax when it realizes she might be able to see the smear of dried blood in its mouth.  
  
It softens.  
  
“Stay with me down here, and I give you my word that I will help you. I will teach you everything that you need to know to kill them all, and you will have your vengeance against the fools who were stupid enough to hurt you.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

  
Ruth’s eyes had lit up like sapphires when he’d clapped her on the back, told her congratulations and that she looked great. There was a tiny ball of grey-black mascara clumped at the corner of her cheek, and for some reason it was all that Sam could look at. He could feel the eyes on her like hands on his skin, all taking in the sight of her in that dress, but all he could see was what she wasn’t.  
  
“So what all parties you goin’ to tonight?” Sam’s question seemed to catch the both of them off guard when it tumbled out from between his lips.  
  
She blinked at him for a moment, mouth trembling and grasping for the words. She looked like a fish, so he did her the favor of asking if she was going to the same one as him.  
  
“I uh... I w-won’t— I mean I d-d-don’t have a ride.”  
  
“You wanna go with me?”  
  
Ruth’s eyes had darted over to the corner, where his date was happily grinding on some junior he’d never seen before.  
  
“Oh, no, don’t worry about her. I think she’s found other plans for the night.” Sam laughed, pleased with his own ability to joke about it. He cocked his head to the side, stepped in just a little bit closer towards her. “C’mon, what time’s your curfew? I’ll get you home whenever you need to be there.”  
  
Her eyes searched his face. It was as if she had _wanted_ to be excited, but was afraid this was some kind of odd joke and at any moment he was going to step away from her and shout out to his friends that Ruth had been a fool to say yes. At last, when he kept his eyes as soft and as kind as he knew how, Ruth finally smiled.  
  
“Let me get right b-back to you!” She’d exclaimed, before hurriedly disappearing into the crowd of dancing teenagers behind her.  
  
Sam rolled his eyes. Immediately he regretted his offer, and thought about darting out through the exit before she had a chance to come back out to find him. He stopped and thought about it though, tongue pressed firmly between his teeth, and came to the conclusion that showing up tonight with the prom queen in tow would be far less embarrassing than showing up alone.  
  
Ruth found him again within just a few minutes, and this time it almost looked as if she’d been crying. The whites of her eyes were pink, and it made the deep ocean of her irises stand out even more than they had only moments before. Sam’s eyes were the same shade of blue, but he couldn’t remember them ever looking like that. He grinned happily at her response, genuinely pleased this time that she’d been able to come with him. He told her he’d find her again once he was ready to leave, but even after they parted ways he couldn’t seem to stop his eyes from following her.  
  
She found her friends; immediately Sam recognized Grady Broderick’s little sister. Donnie had always been Sam’s best friend since they were kids, but Grady had always been Donnie’s. His sister could have passed for his twin; the same short build, olive skin, and boyish features. Sam felt a laugh get caught in his throat at the thought of how funny it would be if he banged Grady Broderick’s ugly little sister.  
  
It was that old song, Love Will Tear Us Apart, and she and Ruth danced to it as if they had never been told how God-awful they were at it before. Their arms swung around above their heads like a couple of haunts, jumping up and down with their silver heels clutched tight in their hands. Ruth reached back to pull out a pin from her hair, let her thick locks fall down her back in golden waves. She swayed it back and forth with closed eyes, smiling blissfully; as though she couldn’t feel anyone watching her, as if she didn’t even _care._ If it were anyone else, Sam would have thought it was almost endearing.  
  
But this wasn’t anyone else.  
  
This was Ruth.  
  
Strange, stuttering, clueless little Ruth. The truth was that a part of her disgusted him. Some awful, deep, primal rage that urged to slap her across the face and scream: _why can’t you just fucking be normal? Why can’t you talk how you’re supposed to? Go where you’re supposed to? Date who you’re supposed to? Just do what you’re supposed to— and maybe then you won’t have only just one fucking friend._  
  
It was disgust. Truly, it was. She was always walking around with her fingers dug into her palms, arms crossed tightly around her too-thick hips to try and hide herself. Always stuttering, always looking around with those odd, upturned eyes. Until this year her hair had always been dull and brassy, like the white trash he and his friends had always been sure that she was. It had only been then, during the cusp of their senior year of high school that she’d become anything more than boring; and it almost felt as if she didn’t deserve it. Someone that weird— someone that worthless— they didn’t deserve to be beautiful.  
  
_No_ , Sam thought as he took in the sight of her gown. She was just _pretty._ Pretty, and never anything more.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

  
  
“You k-k-keep s-saying that you wanna help me.” Ruth twists up her face, shakes her head in disbelief. “Why? Just... _Why?”_  
  
Pennywise shrugs again.  
  
“Boredom, I suppose... I awaken, I eat, and then I take my long rest once more. If I am to be awake, I would much prefer having more to do than just _eat.”_  
  
Its own words remind it of the inevitable; that before long it will have to search for something small and gullible to devour. The human shifts, and its eyes dart back over to her. It will have to wait until she’s gone to sleep so that it doesn’t frighten her away.  
  
“And you won’t eat m-me?” She asks, eyes glistening with tears in the dark.  
  
“No, Little Buddy.” It lets out a snort of air. “I will not eat you.”

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
  
Sam could feel Ruth shaking through the gentle rattling in the broken console beside him. He wondered for a moment whether or not it was from excitement or nerves— had been to enough parties to know he’d certainly remember ever seeing Ruth Nygaard at any one of them.  
  
“You feelin’ nervous?” He’d asked, figuring it was the latter.  
  
Ruth’s eyes widened like a doe caught in headlights. She froze for a moment, and looked as if she was considering lying to him about how she felt. Then she laughed a bit, smiling sheepishly.  
  
“Yeah.” She admitted, almost breathless. “I’m a little bit... n-nervous.”  
  
“You’ll be fine.” Sam assured her, as warmly and sincerely as he knew how. “You look great— It’ll be fun.”  
  
He paused for a moment, concentrated on getting through the next bit of traffic without looking as stoned as he felt. Ruth fiddled with one of the rhinestones on her dress until it popped off into the floorboard below. She winced, then glanced back over towards Sam as if to see if he had seen that. He had, but he didn’t want her to know that he’d been staring out of the corner of his eye.  
  
Sam cleared his throat against the back of his hand, shifted around in his seat before asking; “Are you gonna drink at all tonight?”  
  
He hadn’t meant for it to be creepy— he genuinely was just curious about it, especially after Ruth looked as if the idea had never even crossed her mind.  
  
“I uh... I d-d-don’t... I don’t have anything to d-dr-d-drink.”  
  
“Well they’ll have like hooch and stuff there.” Sam answered, before something suddenly switched on in his head. A smile crossed his face, amused at how at odds Ruth was with the type of lifestyle he and his friends had all come to know. “You’ve never had a drink in your life before, have you?”  
  
“I tried to drink b-b-b-beer before, but it was just so gross I couldn’t f-finish the bottle.”  
  
“Yeah that’s beer for you. Took me forever to get used to the taste— now I hardly ever even drink the stuff anymore.”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
Sam shrugged.  
  
“Just got sick on it once, I guess. That was more than enough for me. Usually I just stick to—“  
  
He caught himself, unsure of how the sheltered girl beside him would react at the slightest mention of weed. He’d had his run-ins with prissy little girls who turned their noses up at him whenever he offered them a hit, and he didn’t want to have any subject of conflict with Ruth before getting to the party. A fake cough burst out from his chest, giving him an excuse to change the subject.  
  
“But hey if you do end up wanting to drink tonight you should go for it... and I’ll watch you— You know, just in case some any douchebag tries to run off with you.”  
  
Ruth laughed, and turned her head to look back out through the pitch black window.  
  
“Who would ever wanna run off with _me?”_

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

  
  
“Give me your hand again. Follow me, and I will show you to my bed.”  
  
Pennywise takes another step forward, and Ruth jerks away and flattens herself against the sewage-slick wall behind her. It can hear her heart thudding in her chest, pounding like a deafening drum behind her ribcage. Fear swirls through the air like chummed waters, so painfully tempting that all it can do is try not to think about it.  
  
It tries its best to pull its shoulders in closer to itself, to try and seem less intimidating in this form; but when the girl bites the inside of her cheek so hard it begins to bleed, it gives up on trying to understand.  
  
A look of confusion flashes across its painted face, and it reminds her, with complete sincerity; “I am not going to kill you.”  
  
Ruth holds its gaze; tries to keep her chin up in spite of the way her teeth are starting to chatter.  
  
“That’s... n-n-n-not what I’m afraid of.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

  
  
There were only about a handful of other girls there still wearing their prom gowns, and none of them were as long or as intricate as Ruth’s. All of the rest had changed into skimpy little jean-shorts and sheer black leggings, and Sam’s eyes followed them as they walked back and forth between the kitchen and living room.  
  
Bringing Ruth here hadn’t gone at all the way that he’d expected. No one had gawked or pointed, or asked what in the hell he was thinking by bringing someone like that to one of _their_ parties. He took another deep pull from the blunt that no one else had yet asked him for a hit of, and started to wonder if maybe it was just him. Maybe only he could see it— the fact that no matter what this girl did in the next few months left of high school, she would never be able to fit in the way he knew that she wanted. _Everyone_ wanted to be popular. _Everyone_ wanted to belong. Ruth was like a little weathered puzzle piece, one that would never make the rest of it complete no matter how hard you pressed your thumb down on it.  
  
She’d told him she was too afraid to drink the hooch since she wouldn’t know how strong it truly was, so he made it his mission to find her something with a cap on it. He wasn’t trying to get her drunk. He just wanted her to have fun. There were about a dozen Smirnoff Ice’s jammed into one of the drawers of the refrigerator, so Sam grabbed as many as he could fit between his fingers to carry back to her.  
  
They found themselves a place on the couch, Sam smoking and Ruth drinking faster than he was pretty sure he’d seen most men drink.  
  
“These taste like Sprite.” She’d commented, and the absence of her stutter had made Sam smile.  
  
She was about three bottles in. Sam made a note to remind her once she’d hit four that she’d probably need to start slowing down, but wasn’t all that concerned. Smirnoff Ice had like what, two-percent alcohol? She could drink a whole twelve-pack of those things and be just fine. Sam was sure of it.  
  
She liked people-watching just as much as he did, and he was honestly enjoying being with her enough to not even mind the digging of the jewels in her dress against his thigh.  
  
Everyone was there: Donnie, Tate, Carter— Even Addison, who hadn’t been to a Chamberlain party since the beginning of junior year. He didn’t see Grady, but he knew if he was going to sleep over at Donnie’s the way he’d planned to, he was likely going to have to deal with him later on that night.  
  
“You wanna shot?”  
  
Tate’s voice came out of nowhere; Sam swore he’d just seen him standing in the kitchen talking to some sophomore.  
  
“Oh no I’m good, man.”  
  
“Not _you.”_ Tate sneered good heartedly. “I’m asking Ruth.”  
  
“M-m-me? Oh no, I uh...”  
  
Ruth shot Sam a worried glance, as if unsure of whether or not it was okay. He gave her an assuring nod, and eagerly her arm shot out forward. One little shot of Fireball wasn’t going to hurt her.

 

 

* * *

 

 

A low growl rumbles in the creature’s throat, though almost at once it understands. This shape that it wears, the skin of a clown it once knew, belonged to that of a _man._ A human man, one of the most terrifying shapes of all.  
  
“Stupid little woman.” It hisses, too abhorred to try and keep the fire from burning in its eyes. “You are a fool to think I would ever do the things those pathetic humans did to you. You are a fool to think I would ever even _want to.”_  
  
At once it regrets the vitriol behind its words. It truly had not meant to snap at the little thing, but what it said had all been true.  
  
Pennywise had never once had an interest in earth-women— or in mating at all for that matter. Being the last of its kind had never come as a matter of burden or stress, for if any other being such as itself had ever sought it out to bear its eggs it would have quickly been devoured.  
  
And if its pairing with a human could not even bring forth a viable offspring, then why on earth would it ever even _try?_  
  
It glances down at the still-wet Ruth, and expects her to look scorned at its words. Instead, when she reaches out her hand towards it, all that Pennywise can sense is relief.

 

* * *

 

  
  
Soon Ruth got enough liquid-courage inside of her to wander off on her own. She’d tried to pull Sam after her by the sleeve of his hand-me-down tuxedo, but his head was swimming far too much for him to even think about trying to stand up right then. She told him she’d be back, and went off to do what Sam assumes now is dance and find something else to drink.  
  
When he’d spotted her again she was starting to stumble a bit, and he prayed he wasn’t going to have to deal with taking a blackout-drunk girl home to her sick mother. She gave him a happy wave, talking to Tate again of all people, and when he left her to go talk to someone else she closed her eyes and started to sway back and forth in her heels to the beat of some overplayed rap song.  
  
Donnie came over and talked to him for a while, but what they discussed feels like a blur. They probably talked about girls or fucking or something like they always did, but for the life of him Sam can’t remember what was said.  
  
They watched together as Nikki Thompson, the girl who should have been prom queen, peeled off her beer-stained shirt and began wrapping her arms around anyone she could get hold of. Eventually her hands found Ruth. She pulled her in close, a loud wet kiss that set everyone watching into a sharp chorus of excitement.  
  
Sam expected Ruth to look afraid when she pulled suddenly away, but instead she had just laughed and murmured something to Nikki that he couldn’t quite hear over the music. She took a step back, locked their fingers together, and started dancing with Nikki just as joyously as she’d danced with her friend at the prom.  
  
Nikki had been wearing a pair of tiny cotton shorts, and the faster she moved the further up they would ride. Her bra was nothing special to look at, but he watched her breasts bounce up and down to the beat of the music; wondered why on earth Ruth couldn’t have brought a change of clothes like _that_ instead of that awful fucking gown.  
  
“Do you need to s-s-sit down?” Ruth’s voice had cut through his thoughts, but it wasn’t him that she was talking to.  
  
There was a small groan of exhaustion, and when all at once Nikki Thompson had collapsed, it had been Sam’s arm who shot out to catch her. She went limp in his arms, practically snoring, and he knew from stories that this wasn’t the first time she’d had too much liquor to stand up straight at a party.  
  
“Hey, Sam! Let’s just— Let’s take her upstairs, alright?” Kyle Kendrick, the owner of the house, rushed towards them like a shining light from above. “Jesus. I swear to God; she _always_ fucking _does this_ here.”  
  
The two boys carried Nikki’s motionless body like a duffel bag up the strip of shag carpet covering the stairs.  
  
Ruth followed along like a lost little puppy, as though not quite sure what to do with herself now. She stared with wide, worried eyes as they carted her off into one of the empty rooms; laid her gently on the bed. Sam reached for the trash bin beneath the desk at the other side of the room and hurriedly slid it over to Nikki’s bedside in case she decided to hurl.  
  
The three of them watched her like mother hens, waiting patiently for her best friend to stop playing beer pong and come up there to take over. Not once did any of them touch her, anymore than to help push back the hair from her face or keep her rolled onto her side. Not once did any of them leave her. He thinks back on it now, wonders why no one had ever tried to do anything to hurt Nikki that night as well— and the answer waits for him like an ulcer in the pit of his belly.  
  
That Nikki wasn’t like Ruth, because Nikki actually mattered.

 

 

* * *

 

 

  
  
The fabric of Ruth’s dress is still damp and achingly cold. For a moment she considers taking it off entirely to keep her skin from chafing even more than it already has, but when the strange clown in front of her reveals its bed she decides it best to stay clothed.  
  
“How long have you b-b-b-been here?”  
  
Pennywise uses a long, sweeping arm to dust off some of the debris on the naked mattress between them.  
  
She knows that it’s a killer— that it isn’t a thing of this world— but the way it treats her is so natural and restrained. There’s something strangely alluring about it, like one of those fish at the bottom of the ocean with its pretty lights and needle-teeth. At any moment Ruth feels as if it could snap at her, rip her body into ribbons of pink and white, but she lays down beside it on the mattress as if she has no reason at all to fear it.  
  
Maybe she doesn’t. Maybe she hopes that it is as horrifyingly dangerous as it says, that it will end the suffering she could not end herself. Maybe she wants it to snap.  
  
Maybe she welcomes the end with open arms.

 

 

* * *

 

 

  
  
Sam still doesn’t quite remember leaving. He remembers that it was his idea to get going, but he doesn’t recall what had spurred him to hurry his way out the door.  
  
“That was really sweet.” Ruth had told him softly as they fought their way through the herd of wasted children out in the yard. “The way you— How you looked over your f-f-friend.”  
  
Sam shrugged, unsure of what he was supposed to say back to that.  
  
He asked her where she lived and she told him. He’d never before actually set foot inside of her house, but as soon as she described to him where it was he knew the place instantly. A huge brick house with white columns out in the front, green shutters that never seemed to fit with the rest of it. He wondered for a moment whether or not she was lying about which exact house was hers, shocked by the news she even lived over on that side of town.  
  
Her clothes had always seemed so dull and plain before this year, her long hair usually in a coarse tangle over her shoulders. As hard as he tried he could never remember a time where the girl had ever seemed anything less than pure white trash, yet here she was living in one of the nicest houses in Derry.  
  
Sam had once heard a rumor that Ruth’s father was serving hard time in some out-of-state prison. Maybe that’s how they’d gotten their money. Maybe he’d sold drugs for a living. It made sense, now that he thought about it.   
  
Like a gentleman he opened up the door for her, mainly because last winter his handles had all broken off and there was a special way of doing it; but she still happily thanked him as she collapsed drunkenly down into her seat.  
  
He decided to take the long way to her house; hoping to miss any potential roadblocks, but also to earn himself a few more minutes of a night that would never in a million years be able to happen again.  
  
It was a beautiful night. It’d just stormed earlier that day, so the sharp scent of rain was still thick and heavy in the air. Everything felt pristine, as if the earth had decided to cleanse itself and become new. Sam fought the urge to roll down the windows, knew that Ruth would probably freeze if he did.  
  
“Hey, Sam.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I miss the sun.”  
  
Sam screwed up his face, shot her a questioning stare.  
  
“Summer.” Ruth clarified, tracing one of her French-tipped nails over the fog on the glass beside her. “The warmth... Pretty b-blue skies... You know...” She paused for a moment, then grinned stupidly to no one but herself. “The _sun.”_  
  
It was only then that he noticed her tiara was gone, and couldn’t remember her ever having it since they’d left the school. He turned his head away from the road, took in the sight of her in her dress for the last night he’d ever have the chance. She didn’t yell or scream or take off her clothes like the other girls had earlier that night back at the party. She just seemed happy. Content. The side of her face pressed against the cool glass of the window beside her, moments away from falling asleep. It was as if she’d been worrying about something for all of her life, and only now was she able to just _be._  
  
Sam didn’t fight it when he felt the tug of a smile at his lips. She almost looked beautiful.

 

 

* * *

 

 

  
“Are you a d-demon?”  
  
The clown scoffs.  
  
“There are no demons.” It sneers, as if that was the most idiotic thing it had ever heard before in its life. “There are no angels. There is no heaven... And there is _certainly_ no God.”  
  
Ruth shakes her head; it feels the movement all the way over from the other side of the mattress.  
  
“I don’t believe that.”  
  
“So you believe in _him_ — an invisible human in the clouds above—“  
  
“He’s n-not— he’s not a human.”  
  
“— yet here I am in flesh and bone, and you still are not sure of whether or not you believe in me?”  
  
Ruth’s body turns to stone.  
  
“How d-d-do you kn-know?”  
  
“That you do not believe in me?” It asks smugly, shifting around to get more comfortable in on its side of the bed. “I’ve told you before, Little Buddy. Pennywise knows _all.”_

 

 

* * *

 

 

  
  
No one took this road anymore, not since the new highway had finally been finished. He could park here for hours without anyone else pulling in behind them, so he decided to make use of the privacy while it lasted.  
  
He was surprised when she didn’t wake up again at the grating sound of his brakes squeaking together. A hand went out to gently shake her, but alas her body stayed still.  
  
“Hey.” He pushed at her shoulder again, harder this time. “Ruth?”  
  
Ruth stirred in her seat, cracked open one of her bloodshot eyes to peer over at him.  
  
“Are we home?”  
  
Sam parted his jaws to say no, that they weren’t even _near_ her mother’s house, but the words got stuck somewhere up against the roof of his mouth. He figured she knew these roads well enough to know exactly where they were anyway.  
  
He leaned over to do her the kindness of unbuckling her seatbelt, and could smell the flowered scent of her shampoo underneath the stench of booze on her breath. Like roses and cheap vodka, he still remembers it as well as if it were in his parents’ living room.  
  
Her lips were thin and scarred from years of biting them to the point of bleeding, but Sam didn’t mind; he still wanted to kiss them anyway. Five short fingers reached to wrap around the back of her hairspray-drenched head. Their lips touched, and much as Sam is sure he remembers her taking her sweet time in pulling away, he knows now that the look in her eyes hadn’t been want.  
  
It had been fear.  
  
Her head knocked against the glass as she tried in a panic to pull herself away.  
  
“I— I d-d-don’t... I’m n-n-not—“  
  
Sam shushed her, leaned in again and pressed his tongue between her teeth. She tasted sour, like lemon shandy, and when she tried to turn her body to scoot back towards the door he followed her across the console.  
  
“I need to g— I need to go home.” She protested, and it almost sounded like she was about to cry.  
  
“I’ll take you home after.”  
  
_“After?”_  
  
Sam stared at her.  
  
“Yeah.” He scoffed. “After.”  
  
His fingers crawled their way beneath the hem of her hideous dress, slid it up as far as he could manage beneath the weight of her thighs. Her body went rigid, like a corpse; but her skin was smooth and fever-hot. She was just nervous— Sam understood. He unclasped the buttons to his slacks without a breath to spare, slid down his zipper like the ignition of a cheap gas-station lighter.  
  
“Sam, I’m _begging you,_ p-p-p-p—“  
  
“Spit it out.” He breathed, gliding his hand toward the source of the heat between her legs.  
  
“P-p-please... _Please_ stop.”  
  
_Please stop?_ Sam rolled his eyes, pressed an open-mouthed kiss to the space between Ruth’s shoulder and neck that stung like perfume on his tongue. She didn’t really want him to stop. Girls like this, they’re always throwing themselves at him— at the weakest one in the pack— all trying to climb their way up the social ladder to the top. Someone as lonely and desperate as Ruth, the last thing she wanted him to do right now was anything less than fuck her.  
  
“Stop. Stop. St-t-t-s-stop. _Stop!”_  
  
“Jesus Christ, Ruth.” His hand found her panties, thin and lace and easy to move to the side. She’d shaved for tonight, he could feel the razor-burn just beside the swell of her cunt. “You’re yelling right in my Goddamn ear.”  
  
“Because you’re not— not listening to m-m-me!”  
  
_Which is a good thing,_ Sam bit back as his finger readied to plunge inside of her. _Because if I_ was, _you—_  
  
A flash of white-hot pain pierced through the outside corner of Sam’s eye-socket. She had slapped out at him, clumsily, and the tip of her nail had landed right in the white of his eye.  
  
Everything froze. Ruth, Sam, the roar of heat in the car, the sound of the crickets outside. It was almost like a dream, a deciding moment suspended tightly in air. Ruth threw her hands over her mouth, tears starting to spill down her cheeks in foundation-muddied droplets.  
  
“Oh my God, Sam I’m— I’m so s-s-s-sorry, I— Your eye, I d-d-didn’t mean to...”  
  
He tried to calm himself. He really did. Sam hadn’t raised a finger to hit a girl since the fourth grade during some playground fight he could hardly even remember, but the wave of anger that washed over him was like nothing he’d ever felt in his life. It filled up his veins with venom, made his heart turn to ash in his chest. He doesn’t hate himself for it, no matter how many times it comes back to haunt his nightmares. After all, how _could_ he? The bitch had gotten his eye for God’s sake. He had to do _something._  
  
Ruth squeaked like a rat when Sam swung back his fist and popped her square in the too-sharp ball of her nose. She didn’t hit him back or scream or swear or beg him to stop— she must have known that she deserved it. After _all he’d done_ for her that night, and she’d nearly blinded his left fucking eye.  
  
He’d froze after he’d done it, but still found that it somehow wasn’t enough to make up for the pain and embarrassment flooding the inside of his mind. The fury that burned inside of him hadn’t been put out, and he somehow needed more. He reared back his fist and hit her again. And again.

And again.  
  
This time blood started to pour from the curve of her nostril, and at last Sam finally felt as if she had finally gotten what she asked for. He let out a spent sigh of relief, and climbed back over into his seat to finish the drive towards her house.  
  
And _this?_ This is where things went wrong. He’s played this moment over again and again in his head like a broken VHS tape, certain that if that stupid little bitch had just fucking stayed still none of the rest would have happened, and she would still be just as alive as she’d been dancing around on the tarp laid over the gymnasium floor.  
  
Donnie and the others would have never showed up to help him with what he had thought was a dead fucking corpse. She would have been home in less than twenty minutes with nothing more than a bloodied-up nose, and in a little over a month she would have never leaped over the edge of the Penobscot County bridge.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

  
  
“So what will it be, Ruth? Are you going to kill them? Or—“  
  
“No.” The girl answers, with a voice like solid brick.  
  
It flips over onto its side to face her, yellow eyes flashing in the dark.  
  
“And why not?”  
  
“B-b-b-because I don’t... B-b-b-b-because I c-can’t—“  
  
“Do you _want_ to kill them?”  
  
“Yes.” The girl breathes out, exasperated.  
  
“Do you you think they deserve to _die?”_  
  
“Yes, but it’s not—“  
  
“Not what, Little Buddy?”  
  
“It’s n-n-not that f-f-fucking easy!”  
  
It would be, Pennywise bites back, if you knew the extent of your powers.  
  
The clown rolls back over to face the other way, filled with frustration at the brat’s inability to take what belongs to her. A low growl rumbles in its throat, and it sinks its claws into the mattress to keep from losing its temper.  
  
“It is.”  
  
“It’s not.”  
  
Pennywise whispers again, low enough so it knows the girl won’t be able to hear it.  
  
_“It is.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this Sam says something about it being okay for someone to drink twelve bottles of Smirnoff Ice if they've never drank before and I just wanna remind any of my readers who have never drank before but are planning to someday that this is bULLSHIT lol Sam is just an ignorant awful character. Always pace yourself and drink responsibly.


	3. A Snapped Crown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pennywise takes Ruth to somewhere familiar, while Sam continues to recall the rest of prom-night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BIG OLE TRIGGER WARNING FOR RAPE AND ASSAULT AND BRUTAL VIOLENCE AGAINST A FEMALE CHARACTER! Explicit content here, told from the point of view of an (almost entirely) apathetic character— which may make it that much more disturbing to you if you are already triggered by this subject matter. There are also some homophobic references made.

Ruth’s nails scratched against the inside of Sam’s car as they found their way around the handle. In an instant, some terrible blinking of an eye that could never again be undone, the door suddenly swung out open behind the weight of her back. He assumes now that she probably had no idea of just how far she was about to fall, expecting to land at the edge of the grass on the road beside her mother’s house, but no amount of figuring can ever change just how fucking wrong she had been. Down that stupid girl had tumbled, over the jagged rocks that shrouded the hill of the road, to the rain-wet ferns that lied just at the edge of the forest around them. She had dropped; the same exact way everyone said she had dropped into that freezing river.

The blood left Sam’s body in one quick pump of the heart, leaving nothing in its wake but revulsion and dread. His knees buckled as he forced himself forward out of the car, feet stilling and skidding to a halt against his own volition as soon as he reached the edge of the road. Even as he looked down he couldn’t see her, too dark to make out anything that wasn’t illuminated by the burning glow of his headlights.

Thirty years, the voice in his head whispered like a threat in his ears. Thirty years for manslaughter in the beautiful state of Maine.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The pale rays of morning creep their way in through the sky-light above, though the creature does not feel annoyance as it has so many times before. It is already awake. It has been for a while; waiting, watching, wondering. The being’s eyes follow the rising and falling of the Earth-woman’s chest as she sleeps, the fabric of her dress now dry and stiffened around the slight hills of her breasts. She had made it soundly through the night, as if too tired to stir or groan or even dream for that matter.

The creature shrugs. Perhaps she had been.

“Wake up.” 

It presses against her shoulder, remembering to keep its form in the disguise of the clown it so often wears. It knows that humans, especially young ones like this, are far less afraid of clowns than they are any one of its other favorite shapes. The girl stirs. Her whole body shifts and recoils in response. The lines of her face pull together into a grimace, slapping out feebly with a sleep-drunk arm.

“Wake up.” It hisses this time, breath blowing back the dust-colored hair from the curve of her forehead.

At last her eyes creak open. There’s a small moment where she forgets where she is, flinching back at the sight of its unnatural face, but she quickly lets out a sigh when she remembers it means her no harm. 

“So,” the creature begins, reaching out a claw to trace the edge of Ruth’s temple. “What will you do now that the whole world thinks that you are dead?”

Slowly, as though to not startle the deadly thing before her, Ruth rises up to sit. A hard lump disappears in her throat, an explosion of sound in the creature’s delicate ears.

“Wh-what do you... What do you m-mean?”

Pennywise grins. The human does not know yet. Of course not, for how could she? The past day and a half spent huddled up in the darkness of its home, of course she has yet to hear the things the others whisper when they think of her name.

“When you leapt into the water.” It explains matter-of-factly. “They assumed the river took your life away. They mourn your memory. They tell lies of how well they each knew you.” 

The girls eyes drop down to the hem of her dress, though she does not look surprised. Her brows, darker than the matted hair on her head, knit together, and she lets her head fall over to the side. She‘s thinking hard about something; for it can feel it.

“Come.” It urges, offering out a hand. “I would like to take you somewhere.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Sam stared down into the pitch-black abyss below, fighting the urge to break down and sob. With clawed fingers he buried his hands in the messy locks of his hair, tugging with a frustration that only someone who’d just accidentally committed murder would ever be able to understand.

Why wasn’t there a fucking guardrail there?

Hands shaking harder than they ever had before, Sam dug into the pocket of his dress-pants and tore out his phone. Sam’s old man was a doctor; for a split-second he considered pressing on his name and begging for something— for anything— to help make this seem like something else than it was. He thought about calling his older brother, who lived all the way out in Cumberland Mills, and pleading with him to give him some sliver of advice. He thought about Addison, who’d once been in a spot almost as tight as this one but had managed to come away from it completely scot-free. He thought about calling the police, truly he did. He thought about explaining that it had all just been some terrible accident, and just praying that an inevitable autopsy wouldn’t be able to differentiate between the blows from the rocks and the blows from his fists.

He even thought about just leaving her down there; hauling ass away from those backroads and pretending that he was never even with her. Surely someone would back him up if he said she had left with someone else at the party. At the very least he knew that Donnie— Yes! That was it! Sam would call his best friend in the whole world to come and help him figure everything out, and everything would be just fine. This would all go away. Donnie would make it all go away.

“Please pick up, please pick up, please pick up.”

It only took two trills of the line for Donnie to answer the phone and grate out an annoyed “What’s up?” through the blaring of music at the other end.

Sam had been reciting a script for the past twenty minutes, words tumbling around in his mouth again and again until he was certain his tongue was bleeding, but as soon as he heard Donnie’s voice on the other end of the line he felt himself shatter. Tears welled up on his eyes, shards of glass burrowing deep in his throat.

“Oh God, Don, I— I think I just fucking killed this bitch— Oh my God I am freaking out— What do I— Wh-what—“

The slurred voice on the phone told him to calm down and back up for a moment. Donnie asked him to explain what had happened, and why on earth it constituted a phone-call while he was in the middle of trying to fuck some cheerleader from another school. 

Voice high and panicked and unable to get even a semblance of a grip, Sam let the lies spill forth like drool from his lips. “I swear to God, Donnie; I was just... We were making out and she just fell out of the fucking door. I think she hit her head on one of those weird ass fucking rocks and I’m— I’m high as shit and she was wasted and I— I— I just I don’t know it looks so fucking bad dude I—“

“Wait there.” The voice on the phone told him. “I’m coming to get you.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Ruth holds onto the tail end of its suit, fingers curled into the braided spine over its back, and follows like a duckling as the clown leads her out of the tunnels. Her feet are bare and blackened, and every step down into the murky sewer makes the cuts at the edges of her heels sing with pain.

“Wh-where are we g-going?”

Pennywise grunts.

“You will see.”

She thinks about stopping. She thinks about pulling defiantly away, demanding an answer before she even considers taking another step after it; but she keeps her mouth shut tight. What victory will it give her to stand up to it? Even if it is taking her to a certain slaughter, why would she try to fight it? Just yesterday morning— or was it the day before? Ruth wasn’t sure now how long it had been, but she remembers how it had felt to spread her arms and offer herself up to death’s door. It was the most liberating thing she had ever felt in her life. The river-rinsed air had rushed across her face, and for once in Ruth’s short life, she had felt free.

So she follows it. She follows it as if she should have no reason in the world to ever distrust the actions of a man.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

Sam turned to stare with listless eyes as he waited to hear the roaring engine of Donnie’s Ford, waited to spot the bright shiny paint-job the dark-haired boy had always taken so much pride in. He listened for the sound of those familiar speakers, the ones that rumbled the ground when he turned it all the way up, and prayed to God Donnie didn’t get himself arrested on the drive over to meet him.

It had been a couple months since Sam had willingly set foot inside of that truck. He’d sworn to himself that he never would again, not since after what had happened the last time. Donnie had a habit of driving around like a bat out of Hell, sometimes stoned but usually drunk, and he had taken a turn so wrong that they’d slid about thirty yards into the center of a cornfield. Donnie’d always been a dick, always had a cold-spot for girls, but in the past few months his driving had gone from bad to just plain bizarre. Hell, he’d once even seen him swerve to run over a black cat in his parents’ neighborhood, heard him snicker at the way the wheel had bounced over it. Sam had never much liked cats, but there had been something about the way Donnie had laughed about it that made his guts churn behind the skin of his belly. 

At last he heard it, the pounding of music slowly becoming louder somewhere off in the distance. He had assumed it was just going to be Donnie by himself; but when that famous truck pulled in behind the bumper of his shitty blue Honda, he was horrified to hear the whooping and yelling of about a handful of other boys. A groan spilled from his lips as Sam forced himself onto his feet.

It was everyone. Donnie had brought the whole fucking gang: Carter, Tate, Addison— even that stupid asshole Grady had decided to tag along for the ride. Sam felt his short fingers curling into fists at his sides. They were all snickering at something, all laughing like this was the funniest thing any of them had ever seen in their lives.

Donnie climbed down from his seat, clutching an unopened bottle of beer in his hand. His class ring was too tight around his finger, and it made his hands look even bigger than they already were.

“Where is she?”

When Sam raised a trembling forearm and gestured down the hill, Donnie laughed like he couldn’t believe his eyes. He was still wearing his crown, heavy and tilted goofily over to the side of his head.

“You’re joking.” Donnie breathed, before seeing the sincerity in his friend’s reddened face. “Well come on then, Retard.” The boy’s expression hardened. “Fuckin’ show me already.”

Sam felt a gag lurch in his throat. If he saw Ruth Nygaard’s brains lying out there on those rocks he knew he would surely vomit.

“I can’t.” He admitted at last. “I just... You go.”

Donnie shrugged. He turned on the flashlight to his phone, then hurried to gracefully step down the hazardous rocks below. The other four boys had all exchanged glances, hesitating for only a second before jumping to scramble after him. If there really was a dead body down at the edge of this hill, they sure as Hell weren’t going to miss their chances to see it.

“You’re meanin’ to tell me a fall like that can really fuckin’ kill somebody? Bitch rolled like what— maybe ten feet down those rocks before hittin’ the grass— and then she fuckin’ died?”

“If she fell the right way.” Grady muttered. “Or the wrong way, I guess, however you’re looking at it.”

Sam followed, reluctantly. His stomach still felt a hairline away from betraying him, from expelling everything he’d eaten earlier that night at the steakhouse with his date. Eyes looking up the stars, he blindly made his way down to the base of the rocky mound.

Sam sensed Grady suddenly freeze beside him. “Wait a minute. Is that—“

“Ruth Nygaard.” He interrupted, numbly. “I saw her tonight at the prom dancing around with your sister.” 

“Yeah, that was her date.”

“Her date?” Carter scoffed, stuffing a wad of tobacco behind his lip. “That’s the gayest shit I ever heard.”

“Just as friends.” Grady snapped, shoving Carter off of his balance with a quick push of his forearm.

Crouching down by the body, Donnie threw out his hand with his palm pressed straight towards them.

“Would you guys please— for Christ’s fucking sake— try shutting your goddamn mouths?”

Everyone obeyed, immediately going as silent and as still as a group of church mice. If Donnie told you to do something, you did it with a smile on your face. That was the way things were. That was the way they had always been.

The dark-haired teenager had his whole hand pressed flat against the side of Ruth’s neck, dark brows furrowed in concentration. A moment passed, and then his eyes suddenly shot open wide.

“Sam, you fucking retard. She’s—“ Donnie had to pause to laugh, throwing up the back of his fist to stifle the sound. “She’s not fucking dead.”

“She isn’t?”

“No.” Donnie rolled his eyes. “Doesn’t even look like she really hit her head. Just fucked up her nose really bad.”

Sam winced at the reminder of how many times he had hit Ruth in the face, but let out a sigh of relief so intense it nearly brought him to his knees from the force of it.

“Oh thank fucking God!”

He was just about to ask what on earth he should do with her now, when Carter raised a long, pale finger to point down at the unconscious teenager lying motionless in the weeds.

“Hey look here, y’all.” The boy jabbed, tilting his head to the side. “You can see her panties.”

They all circled around to stand where the other boy stood, cocking their heads to the side. It was true. The end of her dress had risen above one of her hips, revealing the pink stripe of a thong over the curve of her ass.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The pair reaches the barrens. As soon as the babble of the creek reaches her ears, the girl lets go of its suit so suddenly it almost wonders if it had somehow burned her. She throws a hand up to the light, blinded by it, and it turns back to offer her a hand once more.

She declines it. Instead, they both just stand and wait for her eyes to adjust.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

It was Tate who had finally flipped the undeserving prom-queen over onto her back. Besides the thick trail of coagulated blood that led down both of her nostrils, she seemed to look completely intact. There was no crack in her skull, no bones jutting out from any one of her suntanned limbs. She was unmarred, unharmed, untouched; and Sam couldn’t understand why it made him feel so goddamn angry.

Sam’s eyes bounced over to Donnie’s— and boy did the guy look pissed too. He ripped off his crown and launched it down into the wet grass beneath his feet, cheeks reddening to the color of fresh blood on his skin.

“Do you even know how close I was to getting my fuckin’ dick sucked before you called me here?”

A little burst of fear thrummed its way through Sam’s pounding heart. His mouth went thick with spit, jaw wired completely shut in his head. Then the dark-haired teenager turned away towards Ruth’s unconscious body, and snarled at her instead.

“You stupid little bitch.” Donnie spat before landing a hard kick right against the curve of Ruth’s hip. “I’d be balls-deep in Kaylee Hester’s mouth right if it wasn’t for your dumb fucking ass.”

Sam’s eyes had widened at that. He knows how that seems now— feeling concerned for her safety after just punching the hell out of her face— but a pang of alarm jolted through his body at the force of Donnie’s kick to the side of her ribs. Ruth hadn’t done anything to Don. Hell, almost three hours ago she’d been giving him a kiss right in front of the whole school.

Maybe there was just something about her, something invisibly terrible to the naked eye, something inside of her that everyone couldn’t help but see and want to hurt.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Ruth tries her best to pick up her feet as they climb up the muddy hill leading towards an unfamiliar field. She can already feel herself growing tired, and a low growl rumbles to life at the pit of her stomach.

“You will need to eat soon.” It comments, slowing to walk directly beside her now. “As will I.”

“I d-d-don’t... There’s n-n-nothing I want to eat.”

It shakes its head. A drool of saliva pools in the corner of its painted lips, thick like black cherries.

“You are too thin. Your body is small... Weak... Like a child.”

“M-my body disgusts me.”

“Your body is a weapon.” Pennywise muses. “If you would only learn how to use it.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Sam should have known where it was going before Carter and Tate had even ripped off the zipper at the back of Ruth’s dress, but the truth of it was that even if he had seen it coming, he certainly wouldn’t have been the one to try and stop it. In fact someone even did jump in to stop it— Addison, who six months ago nearly lost ten years of his life to a drunken slut at a party.

“You guys know what this is, right? I mean... Like this? This is uh... This is rape?” He’d warned them all with a shiver up his spine, having known from his own personal experience. “Yeah. I’m uh... I’m pretty sure this is rape.”

The others had all shrugged him off, too stupid and too excited to care about something as trivial as the definition of what they were all about to do. It was like a dark train rolling in the distance, one that had always been heading that way, and now that it was here there was nothing anyone wanted to do to stop it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Ruth tilts her head to stare suspiciously up at the otherworldly being strolling just to the right of her.

“Where are you... Where are you from? H-how did you... How did f-find me?”

“I came here long ago— before any human or beast ever dared to walk this Earth. I waited for the birth of man, so that I may have something delicious to feed upon... And as for finding you?” It flashes her a large, round eye surrounded by an ink-black shadow. “Luck, I suppose.”

Unnerved, Ruth nods her head at it. She still doesn’t know whether or not it intends to eat her.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Ruth’s dress looked like the skin of an emerald snake out to bask as it lied crumpled up at the edge of the rocks. They’d taken off her heels and thrown them out towards the forest, though Sam wouldn’t understand why until later. The only thing that was left was her odd, flesh-colored, silicone bra that had been somehow glued to her breasts. Carter had tried to rip it off, desperate to see what lied beneath, but as soon as her skin started to bleed Donnie had told him to cut it out.

Sam stole a couple hurried glances while her thighs were spread open naked towards where he and Donnie stood, but it felt too much like looking at something he wasn’t supposed to be seeing. It was like spying on Grady’s sister in the shower, or peeping through the crack in the door whenever his brother’s wife had changed her bathing suit. Any arousal he felt was too darkened by humility to be able to feel anything more than just wrong.

They were all touching on her, all but Donnie and Sam, shoving fingers in her mouth and everywhere else they could find. Even Addison had finally given in, deciding that even if Ruth ever decided to raise her tongue against him, there would be five more to strike her back down. It was all of them, pawing at her like animals, and all Sam could do was just stare.

When Tate’s fingers had come back streaked with blood the boy had gagged and jerked back, but they quickly realized it wasn’t the red tide, and instead the six of them had finally struck gold.

Ruth Nygaard was somehow still a virgin.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The journey goes on far longer than it knows the Earthling had expected. If her shins and feet were wounded before, they are certainly in ribbons now. Thoughts of swollen, green skin; of pus and ooze and maggots and worms; they all fill its mind with the dread of infection. It shrugs it off though. Surely, when they get to their destination, she’ll be able to clean herself the way that humans so often have to.

“Have you ever b-been with a... With a person b-before?” Her words come as a surprise even to it. It doesn’t know where they came from, or why she suddenly felt bold enough to ask it something about itself that she clearly already knows the answer to.

“I am with you.” It answers plainly. “Are you not a person?”

“That’s... n-not what I mean.” The girl starts up again only a minute’s time later. “What I m-meant to ask... Is if... If you’ve ever made love to a human before.”

“No.” It answers flatly, uninterested in the topic.

“What about—“

“No. I have never made love with any creature before.”

“So you’re a virgin.” Ruth’s gaze drops to the ground, eyes transfixed on the tips of her toes as they go crashing through the brambles. She adds, so quietly that a mere human would have missed it, “I wish I were a virgin.”

“You are.”

“No. A virgin means you’ve never had s-s-s—“ Ruth pauses and sighs, as if it had been far too much of a strain for her to try and get the word out. “A virgin means you’ve never made love.”

A pang of something unfamiliar to it pierces the wall of its chest. It can’t help but stop in its tracks and stare at her, head tilted to the side.

 _What those vermin did to you,_ Pennywise bites back with its gloves bunched tightly into fists, _was the furthest thing from love that I have ever seen._

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

When Ruth’s eyes fluttered opened and she saw Grady staring down at her she’d let out a cry of relief. Tears began to spill from her eyes as she jerked forwards to try and reach out to him, the memory of Sam beating her in his car still obviously fresh in her mind. It was her best friend’s brother, and he had surely come to save her. Eyes pleading, her gaze dropped down to see where his hands were. When she saw that he was undoing the clasp of his belt, Ruth didn’t look relieved anymore.

“Grady? Wh-what are you—? Grady n-no... No.”

Her head shook violently back and forth, and when Tate and Carter firmed their grip on her arms she started to thrash her legs like a frightened horse, kicking up rocks as she did everything she could to back away.

“N-n-n-n-no! No! No! N-no! No!”

It was like a broken fucking record, stuttering and chanting something that none of them obviously cared enough to hear. Even now, as Sam sits down for lunch, it makes his blood heat up behind his skin in annoyance. If that word hadn’t made things stop the first time she’d said it, then why the fuck did she think repeating it was going to make any difference?

Ruth screamed. She tilted her head back, and a sound like a howl ripped free from her throat. Sam was sure no one would be up to hear them all the way out on the backroads by Joe Herrington’s house, but it still made his belly clench up in fear.

The girl’s wounded nostrils started to pour again, more than Sam was sure he’d ever seen anyone’s nose bleed before in his life. It was almost as if the more frantically she writhed, the more the blood would pour, and when Carter suddenly jammed a fist below her ribs she’d let out a sound as if she’d been stabbed.

“Grady, _Grady_ p-p-please, I don’t—“ Ruth begged, “I’ve n-n-n-never—“

Grady pressed a flattened hand to the side of her face as he covered her body with his own.

It all made sense, somehow. Years of nasty names and alienation, letting her think for a moment that she had a chance of being their friend, just to remind her that her place would always be just where it was right then. Crying, bleeding, struggling for air beneath all of them.

Ruth was trash. And _this?_ This was what happened to trash.

Grady jerked his body forward, balancing himself on one of his hands while the other was busy guiding himself. Ruth screamed louder than she had before, and something strange seemed to fall over the valley of the ravine. The air felt tighter somehow, metallic; like that odd feeling Sam used to get before having a nosebleed of his own. It made the hair stand up at the back of his neck, and all he could think about was how ready he was to get back home.

He isn’t quite sure if it’s simply his memory melding with his nightmares, but he’s pretty certain he remembers everyone else cheering Grady on as he fucked her. It was so at odds with what was actually happening, that when Sam tries to revisit the sound it’s always as if he’s listening to it through an inch of solid glass. It doesn’t feel real. It still doesn’t feel real.

Despite Grady being a couple of years older than them, he had never been further than second-base, and it showed in how quickly his stocky body had shuddered to a stop. Someone clapped the olive-skinned man on the back, and Donnie had even helped pull him back up to his feet.

Sam couldn’t help the sigh of relief that fell from his lips. It was over, he had thought, until Tate had stood and unzipped the teeth of his slacks.

He tried to keep from watching a lot of it, tried to find some excuse to look at anything else but that. At one point he’d even gone and grabbed a pipe from the glovebox of his car, pretended to be busy smoking nothing but ash. He remembers that she kept passing out. Every so often the screaming would stop, and her head would fall over limp in one of the boys’ arms. The second the last teenager had finished, a new one was right there to start again, and Sam felt his guts churn every single time.

How disgusting that was to him— to fuck a girl after someone else had already came inside of her.

When it came Sam’s turn he told them all that he was tired, but the truth of it was that he was actually just afraid. Years of sports hadn’t kept him lean like the other boys. His belly was plump and riddled with angry violet stretch-marks, and he’d had enough sleepovers at their houses to know that what he kept between his legs could never begin to compete. Instead he told them all he’d already had his fill for the night, and tried to act as encouraging as he could when Tate kneeled down in front of her again for the second time.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Time, sound, everything— it all bends around them as they trek through the grass, dying beneath the feet of the clown; and she winces at the urge to make her ears pop. Suddenly Ruth can see it, the familiar flash of brick in the distance, and she stops suddenly in her tracks. She knows where it’s taking her.

“I-I-I d-don’t....”

“You are fine.” It hisses. “It will only be us.”

She falls behind. It doesn’t look the way it had looked the last time she had left it. It looks brighter somehow, sunshine beaming down on the charcoal roof like golden rain, warmth kissing the bare skin of her shoulders. The back door is unlocked when they reach it, though Ruth doesn’t suppose it would have mattered. The creature pulls it open with its mind, and when the cool air rushes across her face, she can’t help but choke back a sob.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

When at last it was Donnie’s turn to get down on his knees, Ruth had woken up again without saying anything. This time she lied there like a cobra in wait, eyes squeezed tight enough that no one would know what she was readying herself to do. When Donnie slipped his slacks down around his knees and took himself into his hand to line himself up, Ruth spat right in the center of his face.

Everyone froze. Someone had gasped in horror, but Sam wasn’t able to see who it was. The crickets went still, and he’s pretty sure that during that terrible stretch of empty time no one had even dared breathe. Even Ruth had gone quiet again, as though even she— who unlike the others had never truly seen the extent of Donnie’s cruelty— sensed that what she had done was a terrible fucking mistake.

The whole time Donnie just sat there, crouched between Ruth’s legs, with that stupid stripe of blood-pinked foam sitting right there across the bridge of his nose.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“You can eat here.” Pennywise tells her, gesturing to the dark hallway inside. “You can bathe, and change your clothes, and cover the wounds of your feet.”

She hardly even hears him. The first room she goes to is her mother’s, as if it were pulling her there on an invisible chain.

The house had been cleared by now, Ruth was sure of it, but here it was in the exact same state it had been left on the night that her mother had passed. The room still smells like her, the sweet scent of perfume and powder. Her old books are still on the nightstand, a glass of water with ice that has yet to melt, and she feels a tear fall from her lashes onto her cheek.

“Is this real? All of this?”

The clown leans against the doorway; she watches it from the reflection in the mirror.

“As real as you want it to be.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Donnie hadn’t yelled. He hadn’t hit her like Sam had, hadn’t pulled out the knife his father had given him for his eighteenth birthday. He hadn’t even sworn; hadn’t said a word of anything at all. All he had done was calmly let out a little snort of air before pulling up his pants.

Sam felt the tug of a question on the back of his tongue, like fishhooks dug deep inside of his throat.

_Is it over yet, Donnie? Can we all just go back home now? Please? Can we please just get the fuck out of here and then never talk about any of this again?_

His friend answered him by turning back around towards him and walking slowly and steadily up towards the edge of the road. No one dared move. No one dared try and stop whatever horror the young man had certainly had in mind.

When Donnie passed by, Sam didn’t even try and turn around. There was a small, almost metallic noise that Sam knows now was the sound of tinted glass scraping against the edge of one of the rocks. It was the bottle of beer he had set down there earlier. Donnie had picked it back up, and was heading right back over towards the group again.

He can still see it; that bloody hand wrapped tight around that bottle of Corona Light. He can see the way Ruth’s face had changed, suddenly looking far older than she had ever looked before. It was as if she had finally realized something she’d been denying to herself; that even after all that had just happened to her, it was only then that she finally understood the evil truth about the world around her.

Donnie got down on his knees again. That time when Ruth had screamed, Sam had to cover up his ears.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Hurt. She runs her hands over everything, all the makeup and jewelry and the creams and pill-bottles and— 

There it is, on her mother’s vanity, sitting right there in the middle of it like some horrible fucking curse. It’s that stupid scrap of rhinestone and silver-painted plastic, the crown that isn’t really a crown at all. She can feel it in her hair. She can her the sound of her name, see those pretty lights, feel the thorns of the heavy bouquet as they dropped it into her arms. She had won. It had been like a dream when they had placed in on her head, on her perfect blonde hair, and for the first time in her life she had truly felt beautiful.

Only now, when she places it on her scalp in the darkness of her mother’s room, she doesn’t feel beautiful at all anymore. She feels something she doesn’t think she has ever felt in her life.

When she turns to the creature standing in the doorway her face is wet with tears. She wipes them away with the back of her hand, removes the tiara from her head and studies the shape of it as it hangs limply between her fingers.

“I’ll try.”

The humanoid’s eyes widen; amber, bright. The surprise on its face looks perfectly genuine, even if Ruth is sure that this was the only reason she had even been brought back here. 

“Speak up, Little Ruthie.”

“I s-said... I said I’ll do it. I’ll... I’ll t- _try_ to... at least...”

“Why try?” It asks darkly, lip pulled down into a hideous smile. “Why not simply do it, and know that I will be there to help you every step of the way?”

Nothing. No answer. She just stands there, pain aching behind her eyes, that night playing over again in her head. The smell of beer, the sound of their voices, the way it felt to be hurt again and again and again and again. She can feel it. She can feel the rage bubbling up inside of her, and— yes, that’s it. That’s the word.

_Rage._

“Say it... Take what is yours, and say it out loud.”

Ruth snaps the crown in half.

“I’ll k-kill them. I’ll kill them all.”


	4. Bubbling at the Surface

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m pretty sure every chapter of this fic is going to be extremely triggering, so oh boy I don’t think this one is much of an exception. Be prepared for some depressing ass themes and triggering language

“Hit me again.”

Ruth steadies herself, fresh white dress already staining yellow with sweat. The wounds on her soles have just barely begun to scab over, and it can sense a burst of stinging pain each time she shifts on her feet. She takes a deep gulp, and throws out another feeble punch up against the side of the immortal being’s jaw.

She hits it, and it is nothing but the sting of a gnat.

“Again, Little Ruth.” It growls, shaking away the dull throb beneath its teeth. “Harder.”

She obeys.

_“Harder.”_

Another punch.

“Is that really the best you can do?”

Ruth’s arms drop down to her side, shoulders slumping with defeat. There are tears in her eyes. It can smell the salt of them, can almost taste them on its tongue when it pulls its lips back into a snarl. It hates her pity. A creature like Pennywise will go to the weeds without ever once feeling sorry for itself, and the sound of her whimpering like a kicked dog is enough to make its blood boil.

“I can’t.” The human mewls, knees wobbling out beneath her. “I’m s-s-s-sorry I just... I just can’t.”

“You can.”

“N-no! I can’t.”

“This is to help you!” Pennywise hisses, for what is sure to be the hundredth time this morning. _This is to release the arcane power bubbling at the surface,_ it bites back, knowing this knowledge might only serve to confuse the girl. Instead, it adds, “This is to make you strong.”

“I’m n-not... I’m not strong. I’m w-w-weak... I’ve always been... w-weak...”

The creature blinks down at her.

It has thought long and hard of why it is that her pain and her horror were not enough to make her powers bloom on that night beside the road. It has decided that the only reasonable explanation is the poison the girl had consumed only moments before, the thing that kept her so weak and sluggish as they all held her down. _Liquor,_ they call it. Alcohol. Booze.

It will never understand why humans do that to themselves. It would never give itself over to a thing that could harm it, certainly not for the mere sake of pleasure. No, _this_ — taking time from its brief awakening to pass the time by taking in an extraordinary human— is the closest thing to reckless indulgence that it has ever cared to take part in.

“You are not weak, Ruth.” It states sincerely, and the sound of its voice is more human than it had expected.

Her sapphire eyes glisten when they open up wide to look back up at it. She wipes a tear from her cheek, releases her lip from the grip she’d held between her teeth.

“There is a strength in you unlike any other on this earth... And you and I?” It reaches a hand out to rest at the space between the little thing’s neck and shoulder. “We are going to let it free.”

Ruth’s lips twitch. It can see that she’s trying to smile, but there’s no heart to it. It’s just an empty pulling of muscles, a gesture that means far less to it than it thinks she knows.

 _“Free.”_ Ruth repeats, as if she’s never said the word aloud in her life. Her eyes drop down to the ground. “When this— wh-when this is all over...” 

“Yes, Child?”

“I want you to kill me.”

Surprised, the creature furrows its brow. Its mouth is empty. It can’t recall a time when that has ever happened to it before.

Ruth takes a loud gulp. She fidgets with her fingers, twiddling her thumbs as she holds them down in front of her belly.

“It’s just... Th-there’s... You know there’ll be n-nothing left for me after they’re all... All _you know_... and... And I think that God—“

Pennywise scoffs.

“— I think that God g-g-gave me another ch-chance so that I could... Could d-d-do something. I think He brought you to me so that I could know wh-what it was.”

“To kill a litter of boys.” Pennywise offers, quirking a brow.

“N-no, that’s not what I’m— No.” The girl sighs, taking a moment to choose her words before continuing on. “I think God b-brought you to me... To k-keep this from... From ever happening to anyone else.”

 _It wasn’t_ God _who gave you your gift, and it certainly wasn’t_ God _who saved you,_ it wishes to snarl back, though it firmly keeps itself from doing so.

Because all foolish delusions and imaginary creators aside, it understands why Ruth feels the need to stop those fools from ever harming another woman again. There is no place in a human’s world for the rats that hurt Ruth. As much as it revels in the carnage and pain of its victims, it has always been revolted by the act of rape.

“Men are beasts.” It suddenly spits out, drool flinging out onto the ornate front of Ruth’s gown. “Humans are all beasts.” 

“Yeah.” Ruth lets out a strange little sound. A beat passes, and the clown realizes it was meant to be a laugh. “For the m-most part, yeah. They really are.” 

It will not lie. It has eaten many a woman, slain infant girls whose bellies were still fat with their mother’s milk. In fact, there was even once a time when it considered a woman’s flesh to be sweeter than man. It would seek them out by the firelight burning in their little wooden houses. It would offer them all a choice, their own lives or the life of their weakest child, and was always surprised to see how often they threw themselves at its feet instead. There’d be a moment, a tiny spark in the back of its mind, where it was almost impressed with the gesture.

It supposes that if it were like a human, it would be considered a woman as well. If any of its kind were ever brave enough to breed it, then it would be the one to lay the offspring. The _female._ The _mother._ It prefers this form to all others, the form of an almost-man, but it wonders now if it detests women slightly less than their male counterparts.

The feeling of Ruth laying a hand over its own pulls it free from its thoughts. It had not even realized it was still resting a palm against her shoulder, and the feeling of her warm skin against its gloved knuckles makes it rip its arm back as quickly as it can.

“Alright, Little Ruth,” Pennywise begins, confused by why it can still feel the ghost of the girl’s hand on its own. “If death is what you want when this is all over, then death I will happily give you.”

Ruth smiles at it. For the first time since they’ve ever met face to face, it almost looks real.


	5. Kicked Dog

Pennywise’s eyes follow Ruth as she spins around in a fit of frustration and anger. All of their training together, and it seems that they have gotten nowhere.

“F-f-fuck you! I don’t even know if I wanna f-fucking d-d-do this shit anymore but you just... You just keep pushing me.” The human cries, trembling with exhaustion. “No matter how much you make me run, how much you make me fi—“

The sound of her whining like a kicked dog sends a flash of red behind its eyes. It’s upon her in a second, hand around her throat, squeezing just hard enough to steal the breath from her lungs. It breathes in the sharp scent of her terror and pain, feels its eyes darken and expand. The taste of it is so beautiful, so delicious when it hits the back of its throat. It shakes the thought away, narrows its brow and flashes every one of its terrible teeth.

“Humans may be pathetic, but they do not bode well with having their lives taken away from them. Those boys who hurt you? They will fight back.” It moves forward even closer, until their noses touch. “And they are bigger than you.” It hisses, saliva spattering over the canvas of her pretty little face. “They are stronger than you, and they are not nearly as afraid of you as you are of them.”

She gasps for air, wheezing and clutching at the base of her neck. She isn’t hurt— it would feel it. It doesn’t back down, doesn’t give in to the sympathy that it knows she so desperately craves. She doesn’t need pity, for pity does nothing. What the human needs now is anger, hatred, wrath, revenge. It is these things that will bring forth the forces that lie within her. It is sure of it.

Ruth scoffs, still rubbing at the tender handprint around her neck.

“You th-th-think you know what I’m af-f-fraid of?” Her eyes bore into its own, burning beautiful and bright.

“Yes.” The creature answers firmly. “I know _everything_ that you are afraid of.”

It reaches out to offer the girl a hand. She does not take it. Instead she rises by herself, knees wobbling violently beneath the weight of her body. It’s the first moment of pride that it’s seen from her since any of this began, and it can sense her power bubbling just below the surface.

“I am going to help you, Ruth. I am going to help you slay your enemies, and I am going to drink their blood like wine.” 

The girl closes her eyes, and it knows then just what it’s going to do.

It’s going to kill one of her rapists for her. Yes, yes that’s it. It will bring her that rat’s mangled, broken body, with eyes rolled back into his head and mouth hung open so stupidly beneath its nose. Then, only then, will she see that there is nothing to be afraid of at all. She will see that boy weak, and vulnerable, and it will help her gain the strength that she needs to slaughter the rest. Her powers will bloom like petals in her mind, and she will wreak a havoc upon the town like nothing the creature has ever seen before. Pennywise is certain of it.


	6. Cockroach

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pennywise sets out to surprise Ruth by killing one of her rapists and bringing his body back to her.

Silence creeps over the yard, all the birds and insects in the trees falling mute when they sense the presence of the wicked being skulking in their wake. Hunger snarls at the pit of its empty belly, and its mouth grows wet with the prospect of devouring a freshly-mauled corpse. It can already count all the bones resting in the body of its prey, all the teeth in his head; and it imagines how sweet they will be when it sucks them all clean. It can already taste the iron on its tongue, yearning for it with every fiber in its shapeless being, and it only makes waiting until dawn that much more of a uselessly futile endeavor. The position of the sun in the sky makes no matter of difference to a creature as deadly as itself. It could walk into a full house, in the middle of the day, and nothing on this earth could ever stop it from tearing that boy apart.

A gentle flexing of its ever so powerful mind, and it passes through the back door like an unseeable mist. It’s colder inside, as cold as the depths of its home, and it welcomes the feeling of the air on its skin. It closes its eyes, changes its shape, and with a harsh step forwards against the wooden floor it fully allows its presence to be known. A terrible creaking makes its way through the walls of the house. Its claws rake against the bannister, when it begins to climb its way up the staircase before it. It lets out a steady growl, and the heart of the boy begins to _roar._

“Oh, _Addison.”_ The clown sings, one enormous foot landing firmly at the base of a particularly footprint-worn step. “I can _smell you,_ Addison... I can smell you up there hiding from me...”

It can already see the boy spiraling in his room, filthy nails tearing violently at the ends of his hay-colored hair. He spins in a fit, sweat on his face, and wraps his fingers around the baseball bat hiding deep in the back of his closet. It can smell the fear on him as strongly as if it had already broken down the door, so strong that it blacks out the rings of its irises with hunger, but even so the boy is still readying himself to try and fight back. A deep laugh rumbles through the walls of its chest. How stupid of him.

“I’m almost there, Little Addison... Almost at the top of the steps now... Almost ready to _feast_ on your flesh as I _feed_ on your fear...“

In its head it dares the boy to reach for that little glass rectangle resting warm in the pocket of his pants. It wants him to do it. It _wants_ him to do it. It wants him to try and call for help, so that it may have even more to eat upon whenever they should arrive.

Another few daunting steps, and it forces itself to wait before finally entering inside. It breathes out in sharp and rabid gasps, lets the boy hear just how tall it is in this form through the thick wood of the door. Children this age, right at the very cusp of their adulthood; their fears are always so difficult to firmly pin down. A change passes through the matter of its form, to its most favorite shape at all.

Because who, on this earth, does not fear Pennywise The Dancing Clown?

A smile curves its lips, and it reaches to rattle violently at the brass knob at the left side of the door. When it speaks it does so pleasantly, as pleasantly as the boy’s mother when she wakes him up to start their days. “I’m here, Little Addison. I’m opening your door, so that you and I can finally have some fun.”

A beat passes, and its prey does not dare to offer an answer. It shrugs its mighty shoulders, and it rips the door straight off from its hinges.

Crack! At once the barrel slams against the temple of the monster’s mangled skull, and the sound that rings out is almost like that of an axe striking hard against the trunk of a tree. If this had been an act of true bravery, like the children who had once overcome their terror together in order to to wound it, it supposes a swing that mighty may have even been enough to truly harm it. Ammonia fills its nostrils, the sour musk of urine running warm down the leg of the boy’s pants, and it knows that this was not an act of courage at all.

The clown steadies the unnatural bend in its neck with a grin, showing just how unmarred it truly still remains. The boy’s eyes widen with horror, and with a quick gasp he loosens his hold on the bat.

 _“Pathetic.”_ It hisses, and runs its tongue along the edges of its teeth.

A short cackle bursts out of its mouth, low and dark, not unlike the hooting of a gleeful primate when it rips the weapon away. It splinters in its hold, crumbling to dust beneath the sheer strength of its fingers, and when it wraps its hand around the boy’s throat it finds him still too stunned to even move. The smell of blood fills the air from tiny punctures in the human’s soft neck, the stray flecks of wood burrowing just at the surface of his skin. The being slams him hard into the wall behind him. It pins him there, instead of simply just killing him right away. There has always been something so alluring about the chance to play with its food.

“Please.” The boy whimpers, “Please don’t— Please don’t hurt me.”

Fear bleaches the skin of his freckled face, like specks of mud littered through a field of freshly fallen snow. His lips pull back over his teeth, over the metal bars laced against them, and Pennywise considers for a moment how unimpressive this human truly is. All that power that lies dormant inside of Ruth’s being, and something this pathetic was able to harm her. A laugh blooms somewhere deep in its belly, though it is not humor that it feels when it stifles it back down. It is something it does not entirely yet understand. 

“Tell me, Little Addison.” The clown cocks its head to the side, lets the saliva in its mouth spatter out onto pinked skin when it asks, “Why did you do it?”

The boy’s widened eyes dart to the window beside them, only for a half of a moment, before snapping back up to the inhuman being standing tall before it. If it were not for the size of his pupils blacking out the colored rings of his irises, Pennywise would have long ago remarked that they were almost even pretty. The light of the bedroom reflects so beautifully back when they begin to glisten with the promise of tears. One as deep and as blue as the eyes of the girl waiting patiently back in its lair, one as dark as the wood of an old tree; it thinks maybe it will keep them as a trophy, or perhaps eat them first before the rest of him.

As if somehow able to sense its cruel intentions, the boy’s consciousness readies to extinguish itself. It can feel him fading out, and the thought of its fun ending so early displeases it. The creature soothes over the red in its eyes, lets up just enough to allow the human to gasp for air.

Again, the clown repeats itself, clearly enough that it knows itself to be heard. “Why did you do it?”

The boy’s mouth hangs open, a fish heaving in the grass. All that comes out, in place of an answer, is a strangled puff of wind.

Anger furls in its gut. If this were any other piece of prey, it would rip off the boy’s head like a pair of scissors clipping the bloomed top of a rose; and call this all a day.

“I asked you a question, Little Addison, and I will not ask you it again. Why... Did you... Do it?”

“Wh-why did I do— wh-why did I do what?”

“D-d-d-d-d-do wh-wh-wh-what?” The clown mocks joyously, fingers softening even further around the child’s throat as it laughs. It reminds it of the girl, the sound of her constant stuttering, and it pleases it to see its prey being frightened enough for the first time in his life to do the same. A rogue wave of fury hardens it over again, as unpredictable as it has ever been, and it slams its talons into the wall by the boy’s head so hard they all disappear. “Why... Did you... Hurt Ruth?”

Ruth.

At the sound of her name it can feel something changing around it; feels it in the air, and in the boy. The human’s fear blossoms out like the hatching of thousands of spiders from their nests, almost a tangible thing now when the smell of it dances across the back of its ravenous throat.

It is a rare thing for a creature as wise as itself to ever truly be wrong about a thing, but it supposes now that this is one of those few times. What strikes fear into the boy’s heart above all other things is not this form— or even the form of any other fanged and terrible being. No, no, it is not that simple at all.

The thing that terrifies the boy who raped Ruth, more than anything in this world, is Ruth herself.

The being narrows its eyes, delves its way into the boy’s mind to be certain. Memories flood into its amber lights; the sight of the girl bleeding and writhing violently against the weeds and the rocks beside her. It can see a second glance, the feeling of worry that the things that pack of rats had done would someday come back to haunt them. It doesn’t see guilt, though. It only sees the fear that they would someday be caught.

The sound of the boy’s begging brings it back out into the room, fully present again in the soft light bleeding in from the blinds, and it stares with disgust when he begs for his life to be spared.

“I’ll do anything! Please! Please just, just don’t fucking kill me, I— I have money! I mean, my p-parents have money, but if you let me go then I’ll—“ the sound of his mewling cuts short when the clown wraps its fingers around the collar of his shirt, jerks him forward onto his knees to scramble along behind it.

Killing this boy and bringing his body back to its home was meant to be a surprise. The girl had no idea of what it was setting off to do this morning when it left, nor did she know that this act had even been thought of. It knows that she waits, lying patiently alone in the depths of the sewer, and at once its plans suddenly change.

It will not kill him so that Ruth may feel stronger, for it is Ruth who will have to kill him herself.

 

 

* * *

 

 

When the creature drags the child into the cave, Ruth is still lying in rest on their disheveled excuse for a bed. Her arms are outstretched by her sides; faded cotton gown draped out like the wings of a dying moth as she stares up into the skylight above. A cockroach dances between her fingers as she stares at it, fondly. She enjoys the feel of it on her skin, likes watching its legs skitter about as it crosses over onto the soft fuzz at the back of her wrist. It makes its way around to the flesh of her palm and then suddenly stops, as startled as she is when a gasp echoes from deep within one of the tunnels beside them.

Her neck cranes as she struggles to get a better look, trying as hard as she can to make out the darkened shape trailing beside the familiar form of the clown. They’re on their hands and knees, she realizes, their shirt held in its grip like the scruff of a small kitten. It’s only when they pass beneath the light coming in from the well above that she realizes just who Pennywise has brought here before her, and when she does the blood leaves every vessel in her face.

Vomit rises up in her throat, nothing but yellow bile when it lodges at the back of her tongue. She isn’t ready for this, not yet. She is still so very weak, so very afraid of the boys who’d hurt her on that rain-soaked night at the edge of the road.

 _No_ , she thinks, as her blood runs cold within her. _No, this can’t be real. It wouldn’t make me do this. Not yet._

Addison cowers like a beaten animal when Pennywise stops dragging him towards her, shielding his arms up beside his face as if that would ever truly do any good. There’s sweat on his forehead, beads pearling up and dripping down over the fresh sunburn on his cheeks. He looks absolutely horrified, just as horrified as Ruth even, when at last the clown lets go of his collar. The act sends him sprawling out onto the ground in a sudden huff of pain. His damp, sock-covered feet start kicking him back as hard as they can, stirring up empty bottles and scraps of rotten food as he tries to put as much distance between himself and the dark being beside him as he can.

Ruth starts to shake. She shakes so hard that it hurts, every muscle in her body rigid as they quake violently inside of her.

Why would it do this to her before she is strong enough to fight back?

Something clatters down onto the ground, a sound that reminds Ruth of a rock falling gently against soft earth beneath it. Whatever it is glistens in the light, lying in a small line beside the flattened hand of one of her rapists. Something connects in her brain, and she realizes at once what it has done to her.

 _It’s tossed him a knife,_ she thinks, as she chokes violently on a throat-full of her own saliva. _It’s conjured up a knife, and it’s tossed it down right into Addison’s hand._

“Do it.” The clown orders flatly. “Kill her, and I will let you go.”

Ruth’s jaw drops open beneath her mouth, and at once the saliva she’d been choking on goes as dry as desert sand. “P-P-Pennywise, you don’t— You c-can’t be s-s-s-serious!”

Addison’s beautiful eyes are bloodshot and wide, trembling as it stares up at the face of the being who had captured it. His body goes rigid, as unmoving as if his brain hadn’t processed what he had heard at all. His pulse is racing; Ruth can see the slicked thrum of the artery in his neck as a bruise wells violet over his skin.

“Kill this weak little girl, and I will let you go.” Pennywise bends down on a knee, to stare the teenager right in the center of his face. Ruth at once recognizes the sincerity in its voice, as grave and unwavering as the day it pulled her body from the river. It shakes its head, to convey the truth of its promise; “I will not come after you. I will not lay a finger upon you. You, and your children, and your children’s children will all be safe from me; so long as you do as I ask.”

Addison’s eyes widen even further, practically bulging out from their sockets as he processes the proposition laid out before him. He looks back down at the knife by the tip of his fingers, and Ruth can already feel it slicing across her throat.

“Do it.” Pennywise urges, a glimmer of yellow light igniting deep in the blue of its irises. “Kill her, and you will never have to worry about her ever sending you away again.”

“I hate you!” Ruth suddenly roars out. “F-fuck you! I hate you! I Goddamn f-f-fucking hate you!” 

The clown doesn’t even look back at her. It doesn’t even flinch. This must have been its plan all along, to breed a hope inside of her that it knew would never amount to anything. Her eyes dance around the circle of the lair, at all the exits she would never be able to make it to, and she feels a betrayal as familiar to her as what she felt on that night after prom.

 _I hate you,_ she curses weakly, as she balls her fingers up into fists by her sides. _I hate you, I hate you, I hate you._

When Addison rises up to his feet, all she can do is watch. It sears itself into her mind, the fact that though she does not fear dying, she would have never wanted to die at the hands of someone she swore she’d never let harm her again. The lair is gone, everything is gone, leaving nothing in their wake but pale knuckles and dirt-clogged fingernails wrapping tight over the handle of a knife. 

“This is for you Ruth.” Pennywise murmurs, so low she wonders if she had somehow managed to hallucinate it. “I am doing this all for _you.”_

Ruth can feel the earth rumbling beneath her feet, the sharps lines of her rapist’s furrowed brow smoothing over until all she can see is a burst of white horror. It brings her to her knees, sends her sprawling back onto her ass behind the mattress.

It strikes her, that Addison has the choice to try and fight this, and yet he’s doing it without a single word or act of protest. It took nothing to get him to pick up that knife, and to start his way over to try and murder her instead. She wonders if he even knows what would happen to him if he refused, or if he already wanted her dead so badly that the consequences didn’t even cross the back of his mind.

There’s nowhere to run, even if she wasn’t frozen tightly in place by her own shock and horror. She’s backed into a groove in the weathered stone wall of its home, a chased rabbit wedged tight between two rocks. Her heart crashes against her ribcage as he approaches her. She imagines it bursting, spilling out blood from the orifices of her face to keep from letting the monsters before her have the satisfaction of killing her themselves.

It occurs to her that she could beg. She could open her mouth, and try her best to reason her way out of this with words. She could appeal to his bleeding heart full of sin, could try and convince him that this is not what he wants to do. She could do all of that and more, but all of the pride she’s managed to build in these past few weeks won’t let her. She will never beg for anything, from a man like Addison, ever, ever again.

“So just d-d-do it.” Ruth whispers, when at last he’s close enough to finally lash out at her. “Just f-fucking... Do it.”

Even if he doesn’t mean to, Addison mindlessly nods.

“I’m sorry, Ruth.”

“No.” Ruth answers, and her voice is the most steady it’s been in days. “You’re not.”

Silence falls over the lair. All anyone can hear now is the beating of their own heart, and it feels like a full minute before anyone finally moves. Addison steadies his legs, and he lunges forward with the knife held high over his head.

A bolt of white-hot pain pierces its way into the top of Ruth’s skull when in one mighty swing Addison drives down the serrated tip of the knife. He had gone for her brain, aiming right at the top of her once beautiful hair.

Ruth closes her eyes, and waits for herself to finally die. She closes her eyes, and like some instinct that has only now come to light, she realizes at once that he had missed. It makes no sense to her, how she knows it with an unshakable doubt; though perhaps it’s because she knows how it feels to almost die. The pain is too bearable, and she knows this isn’t the end for her yet. His wrist had been too unsure, and in place of stabbing her he’d carved a shallow line down the back of her skull instead. 

A beat passes, enough time for him to finally realize his mistake, and in his split-second of hesitation Ruth takes the chance to bolt.

Panic drives her forward. Panic, and the overwhelming urge to never let him lay a finger upon her again. She picks up her knees, tries to make it to the hole in the wall at the other side of the lair that leads into the tunnels. Addison doesn’t know his way around this place, not like she does. If she could just make it there, she’s sure that she could beat him out to the surface above. 

A hand reaches out to the back of her blood-stained hair, and it rips her back so hard that her feet come out from beneath her. The impact knocks the wind from her lungs. She tries her best to fight for it back, gasping as she stares up into the reddened face above. She hadn’t even heard him running after her.

Once more he raises a hand over his head, determined features tilted upside down to Ruth in this angle, and when he drives the knife back down her arms go out to stop it. She catches his wrist with more strength than she ever knew she had, blood roaring violently in her ears, and pushes back just enough to keep it from piercing into her skin.

Something like shock spreads over Addison’s face. He bares his teeth in a grimace of effort, and fights to press even harder down against her. He leans into it with the full weight of his upper body, and Ruth watches as the handle starts to quiver in their shared grasp. If he overpowers her now, the blade will stab right into the center of her heart.

From the other end of the lair, a flurry of white and gray movement passes into the line of her peripheral vision. It’s that stupid fucking clown, likely coming in closer to have the chance to mock her one last time before she inevitably dies. Anger helps to strengthen the muscles in her arms— though when she catches the look on its face she sees no malice. If Ruth were a fool, she may even think it were worry.

The knife touches a wrinkle on her dress. Ruth pushes back with all the strength she has left in her now malnourished body, but in the end it just isn’t enough. Addison adjusts his position above her, pressing even harder now when he comes around to straddle her waist; and at last Ruth feels her elbows begin to buckle. All she can do now is try to move the path of the blade away from her heart, so that when he inevitably grunts and drives forward again, it stabs into the cusp of her shoulder instead.

There are no words to describe the feeling as the knife pierces Ruth’s body. Agony doesn’t even come close. It cuts through the adrenaline as easily as it cuts through the flesh of her inner shoulder. It rips through the fabric of her mother’s dress, blooming the stark-white threads with fields of deadly scarlet.

A scream crawls its way out of her throat. The further in it sinks the harder it is to push back. She can feel her arms rattling, and she can already see the relief in his eyes when the tip of the knife disappears into her body. It hurts in a way that makes her feel sick, makes her think she might choke to death on her own vomit before he even manages to tear her chest apart. A high-pitched sound rings out in her ears, and it’s so loud that at first she doesn’t even realize that the words chanting in her head are far from her own.

_Use it, Ruth. Take that anger, and that pain, and wreck it all upon him. Kill him. Kill him. Kill him._

She closes her eyes, wants to scream for the clown to get the fuck out of her head, but all she can feel is the agony of the blade that she soon will not be able to push back. When she opens them again she sees his terrible face, as red as the blood on her dress, and more than anything she wants to push him off of her. She wants to push him off of her the same way she had wanted to on that night after prom.

Darkness creeps into the edges of her vision, and just like that she’s there again. She can feel Grady ripping her open. She can feel them all moving within her, every place she has for them to shove themselves inside of; taking, ripping, destroying. She can see the look on her mother’s face when she brought home that dress; what was once so beautiful lying torn and ruined in the grass at the edge of a road she’d never been on. She can hear the crickets. She can see the neck of the bottle wrapped tight in Donnie’s hand.

She can smell the rain. She can see the light in the distance, ambling down the same sidewalk she and Grace used to ride their bikes home from school. There’s blood running down her leg, into the storm drain, to the same place she’s crouching in now. Her ribs are cracked, and she can hardly even fucking breathe. She can’t breathe. There’s rain in her lungs, mud, the booze from the party. She can feel it again. She can feel all of it.

Her heart slamming wildly in her chest brings her back out into the center of the lair. It is the loudest thing she has ever heard in her life. It’s louder than the pain, louder even than Pennywise’s voice chanting again and again in her mind. Adrenaline courses through her veins like boiling water, a fever unlike anything else, and when she opens her eyes to see the victory shining through on Addison’s face, something inside of her finally snaps.

The beating of her heart suddenly stops. She envisions herself pushing him off of her, flinging him back as hard as she can. A thread rips inside of her mind, and this time when she screams again, Addison’s body goes soaring away.

Her eyes widen with horror and relief, so shocked by the sight of her rapist repelling back to the other side of the lair, that she doesn’t even feel the way he’d ripped the knife back out along with him. Ruth scrambles back, and uses her unwounded arm to press herself up into a crouch. He’d hit the wall behind himself, hard. He’d been moved off from her with a force she could not see, and it only takes one glance over at the clown’s eyes to know that this wasn’t its doing.

“I told you, Ruth.” Pennywise says, fully aloud this time. “There is a strength in you unlike any other.” 

Ruth stares at it, eyes wide and wet with tears. Her mind isn’t working, and even when she finally stands she feels more like a puppet on a string than a woman of her own. Pennywise smiles at her, softly, and then turns to dip his head towards the body slumped over against the other side of the lair.

A cough vibrates through Addison’s frame, spraying out blood into the air before him. Some of it lands on the front of his shirt, shiny and pink, and Ruth knows it isn’t enough to mean he’s going to die. His limbs begin to stir, and when his head lulls backwards she can see how hard he’s fighting to pick himself back up. Once again, Ruth can’t bring herself to move. Not even when his eyes open, or when he twists up his face into a snarl. She just stands there like a frightened little dove, and watches numbly when she realizes he still has the knife clutched tight in his hand. 

The adrenaline, or what she had been sure was only just adrenaline, courses through her body once more. She can feel it coming again, the potential energy bubbling violently at the back of her wounded mind. She raises her hand out, the way she’s seen in so many movies, and watches the fury on Addison’s face fade out into horror.

“No, Ruth— Ruth, don’t! Ruth, wait!”

All she had wanted was the sun. She had wanted to feel the warmth of it on her skin, of that first summer where she knew she would feel like she was finally free. She wanted to bask in it, and be able to feel it. 

 _Fuck it,_ Ruth thinks, and bares her teeth in a snarl. _The sun will never feel the same again._

Addison crosses his arms out to shield himself, and even though she doesn’t move a single muscle, Ruth snaps his neck like a twig.

Her knees begin to buckle, and something warm and wet begins to trail out from the inside of her nostrils. Blood, she realizes, when it makes its way down into her mouth. She tries to put her arm out to catch herself, but the darkness comes too fast. She passes out right there, right down into the filth of the sewer beneath her.


End file.
